Confessions of a Pokémom

I resisted to the last; and then I gave in. On my older son’s seventh birthday, he received too much money in gift certificates at his party (a consequence of our suburban neighborhood of expectation). I thought he might like to buy toys or games but unexpectedly he said to me, “Mom, all I want are Pokémon cards.” That was six years ago and prior to that day, no Pokémon had ever graced our house and I was caught off-guard and a little sad that my son had unexpectedly become a consumer. However, it had a bright side.

After the Pokémon purchase, I was the cause of great irritation among the soccer moms in the neighborhood. Almost immediately, my son’s friends, who had not even a day before regarded Pokémon’s existence, wanted them. They were buying them and their parents were looking for them and the 3^rd graders began to give the impression of influenced Pokémania. One mom shuddered as she mentioned having tossed her son’s long-forgotten cards in the garbage only to have him ask for them because of my Pokémanic son.

I never expected that my parenting style would lead to Pokémom-Pariah status but I have since come to understand how life is full of unintended routes through the brambles. As it turns out, my younger son, who had just begun kindergarten, had been all but formally labeled ADHD. His teacher said that he was inattentive and impulsive and needed medication.

He was classic ADHD but I resisted labeling him at such a young age. The teacher thought that he did not even know the numbers one through ten. He would always say, “I don’t know” when he did not feel like answering a question or paying attention. It had always been difficult to get him to do flashcards or focus for a short verbal test. Had this woman never heard of Pokémon???

If only his teacher could have perceived how my son speaks about numbers as naturally as he breathes. He learned how to read numbers up to 10,000 because of Pokémon. Even just beginning kindergarten, he knew place value and when he read numbers, I could see him working through the idea that the first number is the hundred and the second the tens and the third the ones.

He spent hours a day looking through his Pokémon cards and adding attacks and HPs (whatever that is) and I would have to listen to him drone on and on about how this one has 60 HP and attacks 10 and that means there is 50 such and such left and so on and on. His incessant one-way conversation was and still is gibberish to me but its significance lay in my son’s newfound ability to fix his attention on something and experience control over his own mind.

All in all, Pokémon was somewhat of a saving grace in our house; every bit as important to me as it has been to my son. I will admit that it can become a bit much when all I would hear day and night is Pokémon. On the other hand, when I looked beyond the first impression, I began to see an always-has-been-intelligent but newly attentive child. My older son has the bounty of being obviously brilliant, kind, thoughtful, easy-going, and self-controlled. His brother, however, gets lost in the activity and disarray of his relentless mind and has to prove himself at every moment (even with his spectacular IQ). It took the world of Pokémon to make me realize how truly gifted he really is; and how in-control he can be if we present the world differently.  

At some point, we implemented a Pokémon-earning program whereby our children received marbles for identified good behaviors such as attending to a task without delay. These marbles, when accumulated, could be subsequently traded for Pokémon cards. Pokémon had become a self-control mechanism for my younger child and a system of parental relief from the daily struggle of cajoling our dazzling son to function within acceptable parameters. Even as I would imperceptibly flinch when making my Pokémon purchase, I found peace in the calm bestowed by them on our family’s day-to-day existence.

All in all, Pokémon has affected our lives for the better. Through the combination of Pokémon  rewards and a lot of alternative medical help, things have changed. I will always wrestle with my own feelings of ‘selling out’ to the mass marketers of the world, however, if it reveals a side of my child I had not recognized earlier, I can live with it. If it demonstrates intelligence previously unseen, I will encourage it. If my previously unfocused child can now sit for long stretches engrossed in mental activity, I rejoice in it. And, if it reaffirms for me that my child is as intelligent as I know he is, I laud it up and down. Now… if only my son’s teacher could have seen him through my Pokémom-colored glasses.